Best Practices for Producing Canadian Schedule A and B Documents

This article describes some recommended tools and functionality for Everlaw users who need to produce documents according to conventions in the Canadian legal system.

It includes:

• How to assign document ID numbers that stay consistent pre- and post- production
• A guide to creating a Schedule A table with the information formatted to your specifications
• Recommended steps to use Everlaw's production tools to create the Schedule A for an Affidavit of Documents
• Recommended steps to export information about Schedule B documents, when requested

This article provides general guidance on suggested tools and processes, rather than specific, prescriptive steps to accommodate variation across the Canadian legal system.  

Use Other Bates to assign document IDs for the lifecycle of the case

When a document is produced on Everlaw to share with outside parties, a new document with a new document identifier (Bates number) is created. Some Canadian users prefer to use the same document identifier throughout the life cycle of a case, both before and after production.

To do this, you can use Everlaw's Other Bates functionality to assign Bates numbers to natively uploaded documents prior to production, and then use those same Bates numbers when the production is actually created. 

Once an Other Bates number is assigned to a document, you can use Other Bates:

• As a search term to search for documents with a specific Other Bates value or range
  
• To sort your results table
  
• As the document's Bates number when you produce it

Note that the Control # assigned by Everlaw upon native upload is still connected to each document and is still used by Everlaw as the primary document identifier. As a result:

• You cannot remove the Bates/Control # column from the results table 
• In the review window, the Control # is used to identify the document, though the Other Bates number is displayed on the bottom right of each page of a document
• When you export a document pre-production, it is named after its Control # and not its Other Bates number. However, you can stamp the Other Bates number on the exported image and include a slipsheet that has the Other Bates number  listed as a metadata field.
  

The Other Bates field assigns each page in a document its own Bates number. For example, a 3 page document that is assigned Other Bates using prefix ABC has page 1 as ABC1, page 2 as ABC2, and page 3 as ABC3. 

To assign Other Bates numbers, follow the instructions in our Other Bates article. Here are a few additional notes:

• You do not need to use a prefix — the Other Bates values can be just numbers. 
• If you like to reference your documents by tab number offline, you can use TAB as the prefix.
• Make sure you leave enough padding so all pages will have Other Bates numbers the same number of digits. For example, if you have 1,000 pages in your results table, the number you assign should be 0001 (not 01, for example). 

When you're ready to produce, create a production protocol that chooses Use metadata Other Bates for numbering at the Bates numbering step on the Details page.

Populate fields and values for the Schedule A table

The Schedule A table includes key information about each document in your Affidavit of Documents. Often, values for specific metadata fields can serve as the appropriate values for the required fields, but not always. This section describes some Everlaw features you can use to populate the appropriate values for a document.

To format the Schedule A Table, you will export a CSV of this information and manipulate it offline to meet the formatting conventions for sharing your Affidavit of Documents. 

There are two different approaches to specifying the information in your Schedule A table, depending on the formatting requirements or conventions you are working with:

• Use existing fields: Use values from pre-existing fields, such as using Filename or Subject for the description column. This is a simpler process, but gives you less control over the format of the values. The values are pulled from the original metadata values of your documents, which might have been created by multiple custodians and without the expectation that the information will be used by an outside audience, so the formatting is likely inconsistent across documents, as displayed in the example below:
  

  

• Create new, editable metadata fields: Your team can then fill in values for the fields manually or with an overlay. This option requires more effort, but gives you more control over the exact values for each document. You should use this option if you need or want to have a consistent format for each value across documents.

Use existing fields

If you don't need strict, consistent formatting for the values in your Schedule A table, you can use existing metadata values to populate your Schedule A table. Here are a couple tips:

• For the description column, Subject, Filename, or Title are often good fields to use, depending on the document type. For Author, the Author and From fields (for emails) are usually appropriate.
  You can combine multiple fields into one field using a metadata alias. Almost every document will have a value for at least one of these, so the alias will pull a relevant value for each document into a single column/field. The image below shows an alias on the Metadata page and how that alias populates on a results table for several different document types.
  
  
• For date, you can use Primary Date. You can customize the order of the Primary Date to make sure it meets your needs.
• You can make any of these fields editable if you'd like to be able to adjust the values. When you do this, you are editing the metadata values displayed on Everlaw and can produce the edited values, but metadata of the native file is not changed. If you want to leave the original metadata fields alone, follow the instructions below to create new metadata fields and overlay the values into them so you can edit them.

Create new metadata fields

If you want or need the values for the description and/or date to be uniform, you can create new, editable fields to fill in. You can add the values manually, or use an overlay to fill in values and then edit them. 

Required permissions: Project Admin

To create new metadata fields for your Schedule A fields:

1. Create metadata fields: Typically, this includes new fields for the Description, Date, and Author, though you might have other requirements. These are the values that your reviewers will fill in to be used in the Schedule A table. By default, these fields will be editable when you create them.
   

   Tip

   Often, Everlaw's Primary Date field can serve as the document's date for the Schedule A table. If this is the case, you do not need to create a new date field.

   Give these fields unique names, so it is clear to reviewers which ones they should edit. For example, the description might be "Schedule A Description."
   1. For a document's description or author, the type should be Text
   2. For a date field, the type should be  DateTime
2. [Optional] Perform an overlay to fill in the values of these newly created fields using an existing metadata field. You should only take this step if there are existing values that will be useful for your reviewers to have populated. To do so:
   1. [Optional] Create a metadata alias that brings in the values you want to populate into the new field. You should create an alias if there are multiple possible fields that might be suitable as a description or Date. For example, you can create an alias that combines the Title, Filename, and Subject into one alias. The value that populates in this alias will be the top one in the list that a given document has a value for. If your alias is like the image below, with Subject on top, followed by Title, and then Filename, the alias will first look for a document's Subject value. If it doesn't have one, it will look for a Title value. If it doesn't have that either, it will look for the Filename.
      
   2. Export a CSV that contains the Begin Bates, End Bates, and the metadata fields/aliases you want to overlay into your new fields. This will be your load file for the overlay. 
   3. In a spreadsheet tool like Excel, rename the field/alias columns of the exported CSV to match the field names of the editable fields you created in Step 1.
   4. Perform a metadata overlay to populate these values into the fields.
3. Edit the values in the editable metadata fields to be those you want to populate in the Schedule A table. If you overlaid the values, this will be editing the populated values. If you did not overlay, and the fields are empty, this will be typing the values in.

   Tip

   Reviewers can customize the metadata tab of the document review window to make editing the fields easier.

   Tip

   You can do update values in batches if there are multiple documents that have the same description/date in the Schedule A table.

Create a Schedule A Table as a CSV export

To create a Schedule A table after your production has completed:

1. Access a results table of your produced documents.
2. Follow the steps for a CSV export. Make sure you include the fields you populated for the description, date, and any other field you want to include.
   
3. You can download the completed CSV from its card under the Batches & Exports column on the homepage and then use an offline tool to format it for your Affidavit of Documents.

Produce Schedule A documents

Many Canadian users produce their documents as a collection of images (PDFs) and don't often share the load file. This production format is supported by Everlaw. Read on for tips on how to format your production.

Create a production protocol 

To get started with a production, you must first create a production protocol. The protocol specifies both the rules for a production and the documents included in the production. To get started, you can follow the steps in our article on creating a production protocol. Here are some suggested configuration steps that many Canadian clients use:

• Prior to production, make sure you have a binder or code that clearly identifies the documents you will include in your Schedule A. On the Production Criteria page, choose this binder or specific code. Make sure that any privileged/Schedule B documents are not included.
• If you have assigned Other Bates values to your documents and want to assign them as the Bates numbers of your produced documents, select Use metadata Other Bates for numbering on the Details page of the protocol wizard.
• To produce just PDFs, without native or text files, on Redactions, Natives, and Text page of the protocol wizard: 
  1. Select Do not produce text files For Natives, we recommend keeping the default setting Include natives for all documents without images. This will only include native files for documents like spreadsheets, which do not image well. 
• On the Load File Metadata Fields step, include the fields for your Schedule A table. This connects this information from the original documents to your produced documents so that you can export it after the production. If you want to include additional load file fields to share in your production, select them here.
• To create your production with all the included documents combined into a single PDF:
  1. On the Additional Options page of the production protocol wizard, scroll to the Packaging box and select View/Edit.
  2. Select One folder for all files, then select Combine all images into one PDF file. 
  3. Select Save. 

Everlaw's productions do not include slipsheets between each document within the PDF. If you are required to have slipsheets between each document, you cannot use the Share button from the production card. Instead, you should follow these steps:

1. Access the results table of your produced documents.
2. Create a PDF export that includes the slipsheet information you are required to include.
   
3. Share the export with external parties. 

To learn more about how to do this, please see our article on exporting documents. When you create the export, make sure you are exporting the documents from your completed production and not the original/source documents.

Privileged documents (Schedule B)

Your privileged documents are likely identified using either a code or by being placed in a binder. If you are required to share information about these documents, you can export the required information to a CSV. There is some variation in how you can handle the Bates number/document identifiers for these documents. Here are several options and the reasons you might choose them:

• Use the Other Bates value as the document identifier. If you assigned Other Bates values to your documents, you can use it here. Remember that you are required to include the control number columns in your exported CSV, but you can remove them after you download the file.
• Produce the documents and use their Bates numbers: This process is a way to assign the documents Bates numbers with the same prefix and numbering scheme as your Schedule A documents. During production, you have have 2 choices for how to produce the images of the documents:
  • Withhold these documents so their contents are not actually produced and only a placeholder PDF is created
    
  • Produce the images and add custom endorsement text on the Image Details step to indicate that they are privileged so that no one from your organization will accidentally share them.
    

An additional advantage of this process is that, if you do later need to produce the contents of these documents, you can do so as a production modification rather than a whole new production.
If you do use this process, make sure you include the required metadata fields in the load file of the production to make sure it is available for export in connection with the produced versions of these documents. To have the CSV created during production, you can use the privilege log tool.

• Do not include any unique document identifier when you share the information. This can be a good option if there are just a few documents and it isn't challenging if you later need to to match up the information in the Schedule B table with the document it goes to.
• Use the control # of the documents. This is the simplest option — you use the Begin Bates/Control # column that is automatically included with your CSV export. You don't need to run a separate production. However, the numbering system is different from those you share in your Schedule A documents, which have Bates numbers. If you are later required to produce the content of these documents, you will need to produce them and assign them Bates numbers,which will be different from the control numbers.